SPACE
& SCIENCE NEWS: May 2004
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Private spaceship sets altitude record
(May 14, 2004)
The ultimate thrill ride could be closer to reality. Aircraft designer
Burt Rutan and his firm Scaled Composites took a giant leap early
Thursday toward becoming the first private company to send a person
into space. Scaled Composites, funded by Microsoft co-founder and
billionaire Paul Allen, set a new civilian altitude record of 40 miles
in a craft called SpaceShipOne during a test flight above California's
Mojave Desert. The firm is one of 24 companies from several countries
competing for the X Prize, which will go to the first privately funded
group to send three people on a 62.5-mile-high suborbital flight and
repeat the feat within two weeks using the same vehicle.
Read
more. Source: CNN |
Boost to asteroid wipe-out theory
(May 13, 2004)
The 250-million-year-old Permo-Triassic extinction killed off 95%
of all marine life and 70% of all land species. The cause is not known,
but candidates include volcanism and space impacts. The discovery
of a possible crater off the coast of Australia may lend weight to
the impact theory, US researchers report in the latest Science magazine.
However, the claim has met with controversy: some scientists doubt
the site is even an impact crater. The evidence comes from seismic
imaging, gravity data and the identification of melt rocks and impact
breccias in cores drilled in and around a seabed feature called the
Bedout High, off the coast of north-western Australia.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Hubble sees "planet" around star
(May 12, 2004)
The historic first image of a planet circling another star may have
been taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The "planet", 5-10 times
the mass of Jupiter, is orbiting a small white dwarf star about 100
light-years away. Astronomers are being cautious, saying they require
more data to be sure it really is a planet and not a background object
caught in the same field of view. Confirmation will come if follow-up
observations can show the planet and the star moving together through
space. Over the past 10 years, scientists have discovered more than
120 so-called exoplanets. However, all have been found by indirect
methods – none was photographed directly.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
X-Prize 'will be won this year'
(May 11, 2004)
The X-Prize, a $10m race to be the first private company to put a
craft into space twice in two weeks, will be won soon, believe its
organisers. X-Prize chairman Peter Diamandis says it will be secured
within five months. A total of 26 teams are competing, with SpaceShipOne,
an entry by aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan, considered to be the favourite
to win the prize. Other teams have already started to look at what
they might do after the main challenge has been met.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Bugs go spelunking
(May 11, 2004)
Some of the world's largest and most spectacular caves were created
by the tiniest builders imaginable, according to a team of US geologists.
Hundreds of thousands of visitors are drawn each year to the spectacular
grottos and rock formations of the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico
and the Frasassi caves in Italy. But the crowds now have another reason
to marvel. These caves, say Annette Summers Engel and colleagues of
the University of Texas at Austin, were literally eaten out of the
rock by bacteria.
Read
more. Source: Nature |
Milky Way spiral gets an extra arm
(May 9, 2004)
The map of the Milky Way is being redrawn, following the discovery
of another arm of the galaxy. The structure consists of an arc of
hydrogen gas 77,000 light years long and a few thousand light years
thick running along the galaxy's outermost edge. "We see it over a
huge area of sky," says Naomi McClure-Griffiths of the Australia National
Telescope Facility in Epping, New South Wales, who led the team that
made the discovery. Astronomers are shocked that the feature has been
overlooked until now. "I was absolutely flabbergasted, it was quite
clearly seen in some of the previous surveys but it was never pointed
out or given a name," says Tom Dame at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center
for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Read
more. Source: New Scientist |
Mars scientists find tempting new rocks
(May 7, 2004)
Excited Mars mission scientists on Thursday released spectacular pictures
of cliff-like rocks they hope will provide further clues about the
extent of water on the red planet. Scientists at the Mars mission
headquarters in Pasadena said the pictures were taken by the robot
rover Opportunity from the rim of a football-stadium sized crater
reached after a six-week trek across martian flatlands. The crater,
dubbed Endurance, is lined by multiple layers of exposed bedrock resembling
cliffs that mission scientists said is completely different from anything
they have seen since the ground-breaking Mars mission began in January.
"It's the most spectacular view we've seen of the martian surface,
for the scientific value of it but also the sheer beauty," principal
science investigator Steve Squyres told a news conference. (Spacecraft
rendering superimposed for scale).
Source: Reuters |
How Mars got its rust
(May 6, 2004)
Why is Mars so much rustier than the Earth? The red planet has more
than twice as much iron oxide in its outer layers as our own, yet
most planet scientists reckon the two bodies were formed from the
same materials. David Rubie and colleagues from the University of
Bayreuth, Germany, say they have an answer: the intense heat inside
the early Earth was enough to convert a lot of iron oxide into molten
metallic iron, which seeped down into the planet to form a huge liquid
core.
Read
more. Source: Nature |
Dark matter detector limbers up
(May 5, 2004)
A US team has released the first results from a super-sensitive hunt
for the mysterious "dark matter". This form of matter comprises more
than 70% of the Universe's mass, far more than the stars and galaxies
we can see. The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search uses equipment at the
bottom of a Minnesota mine to filter out all interference. Writing
in the Physical Review Letters, the team says that while a detection
has yet to occur, there is now a better idea of how much dark matter
must exist.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Opportunity peers into Endurance Crater
(May 4, 2004)
After a 50-meter (164-foot) drive on sol 94, which ended at 10:10
p.m. April 29 PDT, and the final approach of 17 meters (56 feet) on
sol 95, which ended at 10:49 p.m. April 30 PDT, Opportunity arrived
on the western rim of "Endurance Crater" and began surveying the spectacular
new view. Opportunity sits about half a meter (1.6 feet) outside the
edge of the crater with a positive pitch of 4.7 degrees, meaning the
rover is slightly tilted with its head up. The western side of the
crater rim slopes down in front of Opportunity with an angle of about
18 degrees for about 17 meters (56 feet).
Read
more. Source: Space Daily |
Bush's 'vision' for space clouded
(May 3, 2004)
President Bush's "Vision for Space Exploration" made headlines when
it was announced 3 1/2 months ago, but Congress has refused to even
consider funding the initiative until NASA comes up with more concrete
proposals to flesh it out. The impasse has brought to a standstill
NASA's plans to begin work on the new strategy, even as long-standing
programs ranging from the grounded space shuttles to Earth science
and aeronautics remain mired in uncertainty. Space advocates in both
the Senate and the House have already rebuffed NASA's attempts to
reallocate money in the current year to jump-start parts of the plan
and have warned the agency that its 2005 budget proposal will not
pass at its $16.2 billion price tag - and maybe not at any price —
in a Congress trying to cope with record budget deficits and protracted
war.
Read
more. Source: MSNBC |
Scientists announce cosmic ray theory
breakthrough
(May 2, 2004)
University of California scientists working at Los Alamos National
Laboratory have proposed a new theory to explain the movement of vast
energy fields in giant radio galaxies (GRGs). The theory could be
the basis for a whole new understanding of the ways in which cosmic
rays – and their signature radio waves – propagate and
travel through intergalactic space. In a paper published this month
in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the scientists explain how magnetic
field reconnection may be responsible for the acceleration of relativistic
electrons within large intergalactic volumes. That is, the movement
of charged particles in space that are originally energized by massive
black holes.
Read
more. Source: Space Daily/Los Alamos |
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